Think Flow Grow Cast mit Tim Boettner
Willkommen zu einem holistischen Verständnis von Gesundheit und dem guten Leben. Ich bin Tim Böttner und mit Think Flow Grow vermittle ich mit meinen Gästen eine Gesundheits- und Lebensphilosophie für die Zukunft, von der dein Herz weiß, dass sie möglich ist. Mit einer Synthese aus moderner Wissenschaft, altbewährter Weisheit und Erfahrung. Enjoy the Ride!
Think Flow Grow Cast mit Tim Boettner
Garnet Dupuis: Accessing Altered States of Consciousness through Light and Sound | #191
Garnet Dupuis is a true explorer of consciousness and a wealth of wisdom. In this deep and meaningful conversation, we explore how and why to access altered states of consciousness. Garnet has developed a revolutionary tool for enhancing the human experience: The NeuroVIZR. I personally tried this light and sound device a couple of years ago in Finland and entered altered states of consciousness within minutes. These states are not artificial, but within the range of our natural human experience, which we have probably forgotten. If you want to understand your brain, consciousness, and the mystery we call life a little bit more, you will love this episode.
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The ability for our brain to change when change is required is at the heart of wellness. You know when something comes along, when you need to change and change is required. The ability to make adaptive change, I think, is a signature of wellness, Whatever it is, is that you go through a period of uncertainty for the sake of turning over to arrive at a next preferred stable state. So you go from stable to unstable and then to stable again, and that's the process that is innate for adaptive change.
Speaker 2:Think flow growcast. Ich bin Tim Böttner. Begleite mich auf einer Reise zu einem ganzheitlichen Verständnis von Bewegung, gesundheit, fitness und einem guten Leben. Werde der Experte für deinen Körper und Geist. Mit Wissenschaft, biohacking und Leidenschaft, kombiniert mit der Weisheit unserer Vorfahren und der Natur. Ein Podcast mit Tiefgang. Yes, hello, hello. This episode is obviously in English on the thinkflow broadcast and my guest today is a very special guest. It's garnett dupuy, is it right? That's right.
Speaker 1:The pronunciation very good, fine, yeah and hi, I'm here in northern thailand and, uh, I'm. I like these times because I like to get to know people and what they do and why they do it, and then share what I know and do. So let's go for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's explore this one. Yeah, and I want to start with the story. The story I met, your work and you afterwards. So you have a device, the Neurovisor and I tried this device maybe three or four years ago on the BioEco Summit in Helsinki and, to put it simply, it's simply just light and and sound. So it's like a flickering light in my eyes. So on the bioka summit, a conference, I just got the device like a flickering light in my eyes eyes closed, by the way it's wise eyes closed and um.
Speaker 2:So I laid down and just enjoyed. After two minutes I started to. I saw fractals, my consciousness shifted in different states of consciousness and it was so profound. So it was about 10 or 11 minutes, 11. Exactly 11 minutes, and after those 11 minutes, or in those 11 minutes, I felt like I've meditated for two hours, or I had a breathwork session for one hour, or if I had psychedelics, and yeah, my mind was just what the fuck? Why light and sound and this altered state of consciousness? And that's that our theme today. So I want to explore with you why light and sound? Yeah, and just one thing for for our conversation. So I'm interested in consciousness, in health, obviously, but I have a background in mechanical engineering, so my interest is in technology too. So let's bridge the gap between the science and the soul stuff.
Speaker 1:Well, let's say that there's no separation. It's all the same thing, and the more we accept that, the easier it is to get along. So, okay, the experience that you had is not because of the neurovisor, it's because of the nature of your brain. So let's start there. I can't claim that those effects are from the neurovisor. Similarly and this may seem odd it's not, because if you do a psychedelic, the psychedelic does not make that happen. It triggers something that is innate to the brain. So let me frame it in this simple way.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to get into the issue of what constitutes the mind in relation to the brain. We won't go there. I know I have a brain and the way I experience my brain is I appear to have a mind. So let's just leave it there. We have an ordinary mind, we have a set of ordinary functions and we're using them right now. As a matter of fact, we also have a set of extraordinary functions, and we don't use them as frequently as the ordinary, but they are both. The ordinary functions of the brain. The extraordinary functions of the brain are all equally normal, natural and healthy. That's the first thing we are made for this. That's the first thing we are made for this. Our brain has this capacity and I think it's important to maybe clarify that just because a state is uncommon doesn't make it abnormal. People think that these extraordinary functions are an indication of some pathology. Or the ordinary mind is you've already used the word, so I'll use it too. The ordinary mind is fucking up somehow and you get these weird things that happen, and then when the mind gets good again, then you don't, then they go away. I don't think that's accurate. You mentioned meditation. I'm a lifelong meditator, uh, in different traditions. Very important to me, uhness is the only thing that attracts me my whole life. We call it the sacred or the mysterious or I don't care, it doesn't matter. But you know that quality liabilities, neurological functions in relation to consciousness and I can say this with some amount of certainty that there are many different and I'll make a term here psychoactive agents, psychoactive agents. So I'll clarify All psychedelic compounds are psychoactive agents.
Speaker 1:All psychedelic compounds are psychoactive agents, but not all psychoactive agents are psychedelic compounds. There is probably quite a long list of agencies that can activate this dynamic process in the brain, so I'll just call them psychoactive agents. Some of them are very quick acting and long lasting. Some of them are slow acting, short term or long term. These are all secondary term, these are all secondary qualifiers.
Speaker 1:If you have light and sound crafted in a particular way, like a psychedelic compound, well, the molecules are crafted in a particular way. It's not like any compound, does it? Some do? Because of the crafting of the molecules. So with light and sound, because of the crafting of the molecules. So with light and sound, if they're crafted in a certain way, light and sound acts quite reliably as a psychoactive agent.
Speaker 1:So to me let's start off I'm more interested in the brain and mind than I am in the neurovisor. Only because those are interesting is the neurovisor interesting. It's not the other way around. So to me, the experience that you described is quite accurate.
Speaker 1:Part of it is some people have a context where they can say, hey, it's like a psychedelic. How do they do it? Well, they took psychedelics, they did ayahuasca or acid or whatever. Or they say, hey, it's like a very deep meditation. Why? Because they do meditation. I mean, they're not like floating on the surface, they do like a deeper practice. And other people, maybe they're like artists or musicians or something they're used to, these state shifts, these qualities that are uncommon but so attractive, maybe scary in some sense, but delightful in others. So maybe musicians and artists you know different. It depends on our life experience, and I've had plenty of time with people that don't have a context. They experience it and it's like they have nothing to say. They're like what, what happened, what was that? And so, um, I think it's, it's delightful and I think it's deeply meaningful at the same time. So I don't know, that's my first blah, blah blah. Uh, to kind of open it up with you, what do you think?
Speaker 2:awesome. There's so much in uh I would love to discuss. And the first big important point for our listeners is that this altered states of consciousness are natural states and it doesn't really matter how we go into it. So for me I'm a movement guy, I'm a nature guy and sometimes if I, if I move in nature, sometimes they are in this, um, in this state of consciousness too. It's nearly the same.
Speaker 1:So it's natural well, yeah, there you go, that, um, and I think it dramatically reduces the, the fear factor, so that this is just a room in the house that you own, that you don't normally go into, and it's like, oh, I think, and you go there. You go there, you say, wow, you know whatever. I mean silly analogy, but that, yes, that the okay. First of all, you know ordinary mind and extraordinary mind. As we've said, these are normal, natural and healthy. They perform certain important functions. Either one of these can go pathological. So let's understand that going crazy happens. But the extraordinary mind state is not equal to crazy, although crazy can have some.
Speaker 1:You know, if you were tripping, you know I don't do psychedelics now, but I used to and it was always great. My experience is very positive. So I do psychedelics now, but I used to and it was always great. My experience is very positive. So I'm pro-psychedelic, but I'm also not a romantic psychedelic user, if you know what I mean. That if right now, our consciousness yours and mine were behaving like our consciousness behaves in sleeping dreams, that's a lot of rock and roll. It's pretty weird, right sleep behavior. They say it's memory consolidation and you know resolution and all these things. But wow. So if, if you are in the middle of your day and it turns into an experience as though you were dreaming, that's not good, Generally speaking. You know you're nuts if that happens. So you know there's so much about ourselves that we either knew and forgot or never knew. It's kind of confusing. It's kind of confusing and you know, I know, I think, like why are we even talking today? Why do you even have a podcast? And I'll say it like this, and I'm curious kind of what you think.
Speaker 1:I think and I'm using an analogy out of the gay, the gay community, so understand what I mean I think that consciousness is coming out of the closet. I think that that in our culture for and I think there I think there are five things that are converging, maybe as evidence, but the whole topic, whether scientific and medical or cultural, with psychedelics or complementary healing, I mean they're all of these things where not I mean even mental health or meaning mental illness there's, it's right, okay, right right now there's something that's saying there's pressure building in our society to have caught the topic of consciousness come out of the closet, even mental, mental illness, you know, ptsd and depression and anxiety and these things. Listen, you don't have to keep it a secret, you know. So I think why you have a podcast. I don't know why you have a podcast, but I think why we're talking at least about the neurovisor and what you said is because it's a time in our culture where there is a change. That is, that the modernity kind of the age of angst, existential angst, that the what the fuckness of things is pushing out the need for us to go face to face with the topic of consciousness at a real and open level, whether it's psychedelics or neurovisor or deep meditation. You know the westernization.
Speaker 1:You know I've practiced in three different Asian spiritual traditions. I'm older than you, I've been around longer, right. So I started off with a Hindu guru and then with a Korean Taoist teacher, in the past 25 years or so with a Tibetan Dzogchen teacher. So this is at the core of my life. But too much of meditation meant turbans and beards, maybe, and you had to wear sandalwood malas and all of it. And now the kind of the psychologizing if that's a word of mindfulness. You know, mindfulness sounds a lot more psychological than Kundalini or something like that.
Speaker 1:So I think a thing is happening. I think the thing that's happening. I'll repeat it, probably because I think it's clever. I'll repeat it that I think it's time that consciousness is being forced out of the closet. It's being forced out of secrecy. You know, if you're a university professor, 10, 15 years ago you would not risk your career on studying and publishing something about consciousness. It was all cognitive psychology and a hangover from behaviorism. Hangover from behaviorism. And now it's exploding, partly because of neuroimaging and psychedelic studies and studies on yogic and meditation techniques. People tenured university male and female professors are doing studies on consciousness and getting them published in peer review literature. That never happened before. So you know what's going on. I think consciousness is coming out of the closet.
Speaker 2:That's a beautiful image. So I have reflected why I started this podcast and why we have this conversation and two things I want to share. So the one thing is that why I'm doing what I'm doing in a deep sense is that I'm interested in consciousness, raising consciousness and raising my consciousness and all the techniques, tools I'm using and the stuff I studied that are all tools for develop my consciousness. So, to explore life, to be honest, to explore life, to unfold my life, evolve life and, yeah, in a sense that's what I'm sharing in the podcast. I don't talk usually all about consciousness, but the underpinning message is always the race and consciousness, because we need this. I'm with you. And another point is why I'm so interested in talking to you, because obviously you're way older than me.
Speaker 1:I'm two. Now Don't say way, it's just I am. I'm somewhat older than me, I'm two.
Speaker 2:Now say way just I am, I'm somewhat older than you.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm 74, so screw you all right. Even if you double your age, you have to go like two and a half times your age to uh, okay, okay, okay, let me hit you with this. I have a theory about cataloging of age. I think we should not count the first 20 years. You know that whole thing. So I'd say, whatever your age is, subtract 20, that's your adult age. So, if you're 32, that means, as an adult, you're a 12-year-old adult. Tim, I'm joking with you, man. I'm joking, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. But right now I'm thinking about my daughter is uh, one and a half year right now, and I'm really interested how, how I can give her the tools, the space, the room. Maybe that she's will grow up a little bit faster.
Speaker 1:So not like optimization, but I don't, can give, don't use that word. I don't like that word. I don't like that word.
Speaker 2:I don't like that word. Yeah, I don't either. But the point is because I said, yeah, you have more life experience, obviously, and you went through this consciousness stuff for a lot of years, and right now there's an explosion, but there's sometimes a too fast explosion. People are confused. There are so much concepts right now People study concepts about consciousness, the mind, the brain, and there's so much air explosion and they can't integrate that. It took. It took years and for sure, I'm confused too, obviously often, often time ago, and um so, but you are really, really grounded in a lot of honest practice that's the point.
Speaker 1:I'll accept that, yes, yeah so it's.
Speaker 2:It's rooted, it's earthed, so in a way it's grounded.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's well, it's um, yeah, we all have the same appetite, even if we interpret it differently, and that appetite just being alive, there's an innate appetite, and how we interpret that appetite can differ and maybe over time it gets more simple. It's a little bit like marriage. I won't get into that topic too much, but that, yeah, okay, I have to be careful that you know there's the honeymoon and you know when the hormones are high and the sex is great and you can't stop thinking about that and you know consciousness is kind of like that, that you can get into a circumstance and I'll use psychedelics here because I think I have a pretty measured experience with them. As I say generally, my experience is I never had a bad experience, I had less cool, but not never bad that the romance of psychedelics holds some danger because, like any romance, there is a honeymoon period. And then there's the fact that there's a lot of work involved. Going back to the marriage analogy, that relationships, hey, it's hard for us to even know ourselves. How can we be so confident we can know somebody else, right? So the the I'm sorry, a little bit of rain on the parade, but a more sober expectation expectation in the long run pays heavily in a positive way. So, okay, the Neurovisor, it's quite a provocative device. It isn't just that it's flashing light and sound, there's a compositional quality. I won't go there because it's too complex, but it's for real. You know, I can bang like a chimpanzee on a piano, but I'm not going to call it music, let alone Connie hand jazz.
Speaker 1:Um so the issue of kind of the way life is and expectations some things are really good, but if the expectation is too high, even very good seems like you're losing and I would say, you know, that's the thing about consciousness. I'm, you know, okay at my age, okay, 74, there we are again. That meant that I was starting university in the late 1960s and the whole hippie thing, and great, I mean, come on, if you introduced two things, three things great music, lsd and a birth control pill, what do you think is going to happen? What do you think is going to happen? Come on, like what a shock. Right, the excitement that is appropriate has to be somehow appreciated so that the expectations don't go too far, too fast. So right now, for me I don't want to make this too personal, but the whole biohacker thing and all, to me is kind of like the sequel to a movie. We called it the Human Potential movie, and then the validation was from Eastern or Asian spiritual traditions. That was the validation. Now the validation is from Fitbit and science and you know HRV and this kind of thing, but it's still seeking a validation for a certain expectation.
Speaker 1:Validation for a certain expectation, and the thing is real, life takes over at a certain point and the pursuit of consciousness is a noble thing, a noble pursuit in life. I think it's maybe the best pursued in life. I think it's maybe the best along with being a good person and helping. So at the same time, how like? Okay, I'm coming back to this, I'm not a pitch guy, I'm a horrible salesman because I'm too much inclined towards honesty. So you know, the neurovisor strip it down.
Speaker 1:I can say two things. One is it kind of tricks you into the present moment, okay, and there's a lot to say about that. The other is an observation about us is that everybody hurts sometimes. You know, life is not just great for most people the vast majority and sometimes we have a hard time and it's really great if something can help. That's why I don't know this whole optimization, superhuman kind of thing. I mean, get real guys. Come on, I mean I'm just I'm working at.
Speaker 1:People say, you know, are you a buddhist? And I say no, I'm just working at trying to get to a good human being level and, um, you know whether I can pull up my shirt and show you, you know, low body fat, six-pack, abs? It's like get so what? Okay, I mean so what? Okay, great. But so what? Come on the? And that's not real popular, but that, um, you know what is it about? Okay, I'll say it this way.
Speaker 1:We're social animals. The human being as an animal is social. We don't live like a hermit singular. What is it about? Okay, I'll say it this way. We're social animals. The human being as an animal is social. We don't live like a hermit singular life, like a grizzly bear or something. We bond together. We need each other.
Speaker 1:Okay, and because we're social animals, a whole lot of what we do is a masquerade, like right now, you and I. It's a little bit of a masquerade. You know, you're the podcast host, I'm the guest, I'm older, you're younger. You know we make jokes. There's a lot of that and that's understandable. It's not a bad thing. However, if it's the only way we can operate, it's not a good thing and that for me, what I'll call learning and or healing they have a lot of similarity only happen when you come into contact.
Speaker 1:I don't know what to call it. I'll call it the secret self or the authentic self. You know that when you have a friendship and at a certain point it becomes authentic, that you're able to share the truth, things are different and for us even to accept our own secret self. I mean, if you've ever been tripping balls and you stand looking in a mirror get ready right, get ready right. Um, that so I mean kind of a silly image, but you know it's. It's an example that what I'm hoping we can do as consciousness comes out of the closet is that reality comes out of the closet, that we're not just putting, we're not just papering a spiritual ego over top of things and calling it consciousness.
Speaker 1:You know, I'm very much afraid of what I call the consumerism of consciousness, where awareness becomes just another product. I'm very afraid of that. One is I'm trying to do something good that helps people. It's also a shitload of fun because, you know, this stuff can really be entertaining in a relieving way. It also can be deeply healing and it can open up a whole a lot of learning, so that sounds like a good thing. I don't know, am I answering your question? I don't absolutely.
Speaker 2:That was a rich answer. Yeah, before we go into the neurovisor and what it does to the brain and neuroplasticity. I really want to uncover this. But we have to clarify a little. I want to have your words, your wisdom a little bit on three words. I think that's an easy and big one the body, the brain and the mind. So just clarify in your words body, brain and mind. What is it? What could be a concept that is useful for our conversation?
Speaker 1:I think you know, I believe I'll say you can. It's very difficult to get the right answer from the wrong question, right? So let's start. Let's look at your question before I attempt an answer, because I think the question is fundamentally flawed. I think the three things you said is one thing. I think those are three different appearances or manifestations of the one thing a being, being, a being that. So, um, my uh answer is pardon me, that's a stupid fucking question. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, you know that's why I put it this way.
Speaker 1:Okay, Well thank you, well done. Just like the straight man in the comedy duo, right, you set up the joke and I give the punchline. But I do think if you want to know the brain, like, ooh, the brain, the most complex organ in the world, well, yeah, true, but I'd say, using common sense, well, that's a risk. But everything that you know about your body because you like movement right, you said, everything you know about your body you can pretty much apply to the brain. Why, hey, because the brain is physical, your body is physical. Just about everything you know about interacting with your hamstring applies to interacting with your brain. It's not that difficult. It's that we have some kind of alienized, our abstract strangeness about that. The brain is like know, impossible to understand and relate to. Well, you want to know what a brain does and looks like? Look at me and look at you. This is a brain. You know. This is the weird thing. You know.
Speaker 1:I taught anatomy and physiology and things a lot in the past and it's a weirdness of our Western system. This is an old topic. But reductionism, that respiratory system, cardiac system, you know, and how do they interact? Well, because it's just one system, you know, they're not separate things that you have to try to figure out. How in the world could they possibly relate? Possibly relate? Well, it's very easy, because we only abstract them as being separate because of the way we approach things philosophically. You know I have a whole story that I'll skip that impacted me a lot early in life, but it's that idea that. That's why I playfully and you know thanks for being able to joke about it but the question of body, brain and mind or whatever it was that you said and I played with it that I think it's a pretty serious, deep problem that we have Our Western civilization, our modernity, our primarily left-brain, deductive, linear, logic-based way of looking at things misses just about everything.
Speaker 1:I'm a big friend of Ian McGilchrist A lot of people are these days. You know the Master and His Emissary, that big book and the new one, the Evolution Revolution, and Left Brain, right Brain, understanding, to throw away the old pop psychology, one that was a mistake but that the problem with the left brain, as he explains not me, and I'll paraphrase is that it thinks what it knows is everything that it needs to know and there's nothing else to know. That's a big problem, that's a big problem. So I think it's easy to defend the fact that we as westerners, and now more and more globally, but certainly as Westerners you know, I'm born in Canada, us citizen, you're there in Germany there's so much that we share because we're Westerners that the issue of consciousness is made difficult because we are reductionists, we like to break things down into little pieces, and that can be quite a problem for us. So this attraction, this business of extraordinary mind, I think it's inescapable now, uh, because of where we agree and I, I think you know the big issue that probably you know, like the are you kidding me? Issue.
Speaker 1:Right now, the ai thing is bringing forward talk about consciousness coming out of the closet. I think we are faced right now with a well, if we can finalize it, the distinction between consciousness and intelligence that a great deal also talk about the brain. A great deal of our brain function is robotic and machines can do it very well in, in some cases, better. However, we're not limited to intelligence. Intelligence is a subset of consciousness. So, right now, the AI thing you know, people that are a lot smarter than me and much better educated and experienced, you know, are struggling with this, what used to be called the hard problem how does the brain and the mind exist?
Speaker 1:It was called the hard problem. Well, I'll say this to me. To me it's like another stupid hard problem. We know, we've known for 100, over 100 years these scientific facts, we've known them, that matter is not material come out. We've known that, that, you know, I made up of atom, molecules, atoms, the whole thing, and that we know every atom is 99.99 space and that they're not little marbles going around and around that. These are, these are probability events. So why are we struggling over the visible and the invisible? Why do we struggle over the mind-brain problem? They're not different.
Speaker 1:Matter is not material, it's an appearance, it's an illusion. That's our science. That's not Yogi Bhajan somewhere in the Himalayas. He's not material, it's an appearance, it's an illusion. That's our science. That's not Yogi Bhajan somewhere in the Himalayas. He's not there now, but anyway, it's not that. So why can't we? I think we can't because the momentum of modern, urbanized Western culture, and now more and more global urbanized culture, doesn't support this point of view and that we are swimming upstream against cultural reward. I think our culture doesn't reward it. I don't know, I'm getting a little philosophical here.
Speaker 2:But I mean, this is… we have to. We have to. I think that the problem is that we don't have a philosophy underpinning scientific concepts. I think that the problem is that we don't have a philosophy underpinning scientific concepts. So that's a problem. So that's why I asked this question and I loved your answer, okay, because we need philosophy to talk about the science.
Speaker 1:If you ask yourself the same question, what's your answer?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it would be. There's no real separation. So the brain and body. For me it's obvious, it would be. There's no real separation. So the brain and body. For me it's obvious. If I really want to see where does the brain end and the body begins, that's stupid. We can't see any. So from a nervous system perspective, the brain and my big toe. This is one thing.
Speaker 1:There's a little bit of a trick there, because I can cut off your big toe and it's not a big deal. I cut off your head, it's a pretty big deal.
Speaker 2:Anyway, just like it's true, you understand, we, we look into it. Yeah, it's like a concept, it's not, it's not real and and we can expand that to to consciousness, to the mind, and we can't really find the border. So so where does the mind begin, the mind end? And, in a way, so for me, matter is not for me. So it's obvious. On a new science perspective, or what you said, and I found this is really really interesting, because right now we have so much research that's confirming the stuff that you experienced since the last 50, 60, 70 years.
Speaker 1:And now science is confirming that 10,000 years. Okay, I think we have stupid ideas. One of the stupid ideas that I've had throughout my life that I pretty much have given up on is this stupid idea of inside-outside. Now, I understand from the point of a membrane, I understand from the point of a membrane. I understand that. But to apply this membrane principle to everything is a stupid idea. Like when you meditate, you go inside. Where are you going inside? You think you're going inside your, like your corpus callosum. I mean, you think you're hiding inside the membrane.
Speaker 1:I think it's a big hassle. Our brain is certainly confined to this skull, but I don't think our mind is confined to the skull Inside, outside, inside my skull or outside my skull. I think it's a stumbling point and I don't want to. Of course, of course I have a lot of ideas. We all do and we all love our own ideas. But you know the issue of. I think a lot of people think the same thing in different ways. I think we are in an existential crisis right now in our modern society. I think things are not going well and I'm not romanticizing or idealizing history, because there's been a lot of shit, but right now there are a lot of problems that I think are a consequence of modernity, in the same way that industrialization pretty fucked up the pollution thing of rivers and oceans in the sky, I think modernity is I'll use the word a little bit more liberally I only do it because you did it once, by the way, right, but that's okay, we're kind of.
Speaker 1:We're fucked up, uh, in terms of our, our experience of consciousness and you know the, the rate of teen suicides, the, the complete angst and dread and the meaninglessness of life as expressed in very young people that should be full of hope and vision. There's so much going on right now. Obviously we're going to seek pleasure because there's a void of meaning and purpose. So I do think that we're kind of at a crossroads and the crossroads will be listen, I'm only talking, I'm no expert in this, but my sincere impression is that we're at a crossroads in this. But my, my sincere impression is that we're at a crossroads and that, like the whole, you know, biohacking, optimization, psychedelic, neo-shaman, all this stuff it's not going to really work out to our advantage. Only in part. Only in part. Why? Because it's excessive, the expectations are too high. You, you know, nobody, pardon me for people that are life coaches, but you can't take a weekend seminar and decide to be a life coach. I'm sorry, it's all fine if you're not really dealing with sick people, but a sick person comes along and they really have problems. And I know people that have been helped and in relation I won't say it Well, they committed suicide. I guess I'll say it.
Speaker 1:So the right now there's a seriousness about how to do this, how to do it, and I admire and respect people that are pushing in an excited and I would say romanticized in an excited and I would say romanticized, idealized appetite for this. You know the old Hippocratic thing do no harm. So I mean, I'm trying to, I guess what I'm I don't know what I'm doing exactly but that the I'm trying to put into perspective my hope and expectation with what I do in relation to the neurovisor. Because you know, you describe the experience and it's like that and there's a reason why it's like that. But more than that, more than that, more than that is kind of you know where compassion and wisdom fit into this thing, because it's really easy to take advantage of people when they have a need and they hurt. It's really easy to take advantage of people when they have a need and they hurt. It's really easy to sucker somebody into things when they are in need. So you know, I respect that deeply and because of that, that's how I want to relate to you, tim is like that, how I want to relate to. That's how I want to relate to you, tim is like that and and know that not everything works out.
Speaker 1:You know, I was thinking the other day and I don't know, this goes totally against law of attraction and manifestation and the secret is sorry, but that, and it's not because I'm, it's not because I'm a stupid guy or a bad guy, but I have the impression, stupid guy or a bad guy, but I have the impression at this point, that there are things that I want that I'll never get. Now, maybe at 32, you really haven't kind of sat in front of that campfire and kind of, but you know, like, there are things that I want that I'll never get. So what does that mean? Well, it means I want a lot of stupid shit. Well, yes, I do, of course, but some of the some of what I want doesn't seem stupid. It doesn't even feel like a one, it feels like a need. There are certain things that I feel that I need.
Speaker 1:Maybe I won't ever get, and all you've got to do is look around at lives to see, yeah, kind of looks like. So what is? You know, I don't have the right frequency or, you know, I, I don't my, I drink the wrong coffee in the morning, or whatever. You know all this stuff, by the way, phineas quimby, if you write it down, phineas ph phas Quimby, research it if you want to know more about law of attraction and manifestation, you'll have fun there. But anyway. So you know how to be a good person doing good things. If you're lucky, enjoying it and if you're even more lucky, making some money doing it. Meaning you know righteous livelihood, the, the issue of need and want, and how do we navigate that? The Phineas Quimby thing you can do later. That and the fact that we pursue not only with exertion and you know and will and everything but, but we make tools.
Speaker 1:I'll use an analogy from music is that there was no saxophone music. Before the saxophone instrument, the musician may have had the urge for a certain kind of guttural, sensual, raspy sound. They wanted to express that, but there was no instrument for it. And then this guy actually his name is Adolf Sachs made the saxophone. So now we can enjoy saxophone music.
Speaker 1:So in this case, although the analogy is a little bit weak, but that the neurovisor is an effort to create an instrument that allows a certain natural, native appetite to satisfy itself for extraordinary states and the state shift. It is an example of a technologically devised. You're an engineer, technologically devised and then creatively or artistically modified instrument to act as a safe, reliable psychoactive agent. You know I deeply whatever a lot of words respect mountain retreats and these kinds of things. And then I've had certain kind of peak experiences, right, and they're precious. They're precious and I know it wasn't the meditation technique, it's me being able to access pre-existing qualities of my nature. It's not alien and my brain as an organ is able to accommodate this if it's given certain types of stimulation. Awesome, awesome, I mean you're. You're a nature guy, you're a movement guy. What movement guy? What does that do for you Other than all the celebratory and over-the-top words? Why do you do it? What does it do for you?
Speaker 2:with nature, with myself, with everything. And the delusion of boundaries, sometimes when I'm exhausted and deeply in nature and just let go, letting go, that's a big thing. And then the delusion of boundaries and this experience.
Speaker 1:Okay, that gives me a question for you. Of course, it's based on a belief I have, but that how skilled are you and how often do you apply this skill for what I'll call deep conscious relaxation, where you keep on whatever that letting go thing is, because that's what I heard you. Let go, let go, let go. You keep on whatever that letting go thing is, because that's what I heard you let go, let go, let go. You keep letting go, but you don't doze out, you stay lucid, you stay clear. How good are you at doing that, and how often do you give yourself that opportunity?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the judgment. How good I am? I don't know. I have no idea if I'm good at that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure you do. Come on, man, Come on tell me. Are you good at relaxing?
Speaker 2:I would love to be a little bit better at relaxing, but I'm good at relaxing. Yeah, I'm good at relaxing, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Good for you.
Speaker 2:I'm meditating since maybe 12 or 13 years. Okay, good for you yeah and so, and I love the, the quality I'm cultivating with meditation, and put this quality into my other stuff I'm doing, into my life, and I love, if I can, um, yeah, if that's the underpinning of the other stuff I'm doing okay, so okay, now I'm taking over.
Speaker 1:This is my podcast. Now I'll ask you this question how do you compare? This is like from school Compare and contrast. How would you compare or contrast what I was calling deep conscious relaxation and meditation, because it almost sounded like they were the same thing, but maybe I misunderstood. If somebody didn't know the experience of meditation and they also didn't know the experience of deep conscious relaxation, how would you compare and contrast them?
Speaker 2:So for me, meditation there are a lot of aspects, but one aspect is that I'm just observing myself and observing things, and this observation is for me like a relaxation, because the point where I'm observing from there's deep silence and there's relaxation. So in meditation my body is relaxed, and if I'm in nature, if I'm in movement, so my body isn't relaxed. So obviously I'm doing things, sometimes hard things, sometimes other things, but for me it's like a wave. Sometimes I'm absolutely into my body, into the exhaustion, whatever, and then I love to switch the perspective into the observer mode and then experience this deep state of the relaxation of the observer when I'm doing things. And this switch from being. It's fun, because right now I'm stumbling a little bit because I can't really find the English word maybe.
Speaker 2:I don't know it's not the same, but they are different experiences at the same time.
Speaker 1:This is what we don't. I told like Eskimos Inuit, supposedly they have I'm making this up. They have 42 words for snow. We've got fluffy and slush. We don't have many words when it comes to exploring and sharing information about consciousness here, consciousness as it relates to deep conscious relaxation and as it relates to meditation.
Speaker 1:It's hard for us because we've not been schooled and skilled in this. Maybe you can do that for your daughter right from the very beginning. Help her, let her know that you're interested in the different. You wouldn't call it. She doesn't know what consciousness is, but like what's going on, because we were a little handicapped culturally when it comes to this stuff and that's why I think consciousness is being forced out of the closet right now. The very fact that we're doing a podcast.
Speaker 1:You're in germany, I'm in thailand, we're of a different generation and here we are spending time doing this with the hope and expectation that other people will find it interesting here. Here we are, here we are, and we will either be successful or we will fail, unless we try At least try. So yeah, you know it's interesting to me because, okay, I've practiced in different. I'm more of a traditionalist when it comes to consciousness and practices. You know I don't know, maybe it's just my generation or something, but I'm more of a traditionalist and I know that. You know I also had some practice in relation to sports medicine in the past that when I say the word exercise, you know what I mean. But you also don't know exactly what I mean, because there are so many different styles and forms of exercise, us novices to understand. When we say meditation, there are lots of different styles and techniques of meditation, like there are many styles of exercise. Well, the purpose of exercise is to promote a higher state of well-being in the body. Well, the purpose of meditation is to promote a higher state of well-being in the mind. You, you can do, you can generalize it, but, uh, to know that there are lots of different styles and they have different outcomes, just like you know, there is no single psychedelic state. Even if you do, you know, acid 10 times and it's the same lsd, you might have an approximately similar experience, but the experiences can be radically and extremely different, let alone if you do mushrooms or you do ayahuasca or you do ketamine, which is not really a psychedelic. That to accept the fact that our brain I'll go back to the brain, so we don't have to argue because we have a brain is that the brain is capable of navigating a very broad spectrum and variations in information processing. Our brain can do that. Part of what our brain can do computers can also do. As a matter of fact, sometimes I'll call it the machine. The computer can do it more accurately and faster Like damn. So that doesn't reduce our brain to being an AI machine, because our brain can do a lot of things that ai if we're going to call it that is likely some people say certainly will never do.
Speaker 1:And this is where, like I was saying to my business partner we're talking about these things and he said you know the word consciousness. Like what other words are they? What would you say? Because you said, you use the word consciousness, you're at least dual linguistic. You know you're using an english word. I'm not saying give me the german word. Uh, if you don't mind staying in english, what other words could you use to identify that? Because we're both focused on consciousness. Maybe we're talking about two different things. Maybe I'm chalk, I'm talking about chocolate, ice cream when I say consciousness and like, what do you mean?
Speaker 2:and my first impulse is that um, there's no word for consciousness, so, but we have to use the word good answer yeah, the thing beyond words, beyond concepts, everything that is. I would like to don't use any word.
Speaker 1:Oh, I don't accept that. Give me a word, give me a word.
Speaker 2:Maybe everything. It is Everything that is.
Speaker 1:Everything that is. It's the experience of everything that it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe that's nice, the experience of everything that is.
Speaker 1:Uh-huh and isn't. I was with my Tibetan Dzogchen teacher, who has now passed away from Eastern Tibet, and because, you know, I was trying to understand prayer wheels and I won't get into the details because actually I was doing digital versions of prayer wheels for certain technologies so I was with them. You know the prayer wheel you can either spin it with your hand or the big ones, or they're in the streams and they turn round and round. I've spent a good amount of time in the Himalayas and so I said you know Rinpoche about prayer wheels, you know, are they real or not? Is it just like psychology or is there really something happening? And without a pause, and, of course, the saying, you know it's one of these cryptic things, maybe, but actually it just settled the whole issue for me, or one of the whole big issues. He said prayer wheels they're equally real and unreal. And what happened for me? Well, a number of things happened. Great relief. But on an intellectual level, I realized that, like the thing I said earlier about you can't get right answers from stupid questions, or the wrong question, not stupid, you can't get the right answer from the wrong question. I realized that I had a fundamentally flawed axiom as to what real meant and I said is it real or not? And he says it's equally real and unreal, which is an apt description of what you just said, which also points out Garnett, that was a pretty stupid question. Why do you think real and unreal are separate, like what does real mean? And all the different ways that our quantum scientists, our high priests of science, speak in this language. They describe it in this way that there is this appearance and that solidity is really a force field of energetic probability and it's like you know, really, yeah, really, I'm sorry, I don't know how to relate to that. So I and it's like you know, really, yeah, really, I'm sorry, I don't know how to relate to that, so I'll just like ignore it. So, with the neurovisor, I try to trigger an entropic expansion, and I use the word entropy here, not from thermodynamics, don't freak out. I don't mean that Now, in neuroscience, the word entropy is being used in relation to information processing and neural systems. So same word, different meaning. Sorry, don't go into thermodynamics.
Speaker 1:The concept of entropy relates to what I'd called earlier the extraordinary mind that our brain has the capacity to unrestrict connections into a greatly expanded number of temporary connections for non-linear, high-order information processing. Because when you've got too many variables I'm not a mathematician but even in mathematics if you have more than two variables in a formula, three or more the famous three body problem great science fiction series, by the way that if you have more than three variables you cannot predict certainty in a linear equation. You have to shift to nonlinear probability. So there are times when the flow of information that's coming in has got just too many variables. The ordinary functions which are fantastic and critical is that I have no idea, it's like it's uncertain. So the brain has to shift into an expanded number of temporary possible connections to be able to do an information processing that I call knowing without thinking. And then, when that then satisfies itself and collapses back down to ordinary mind, you return to the same set of facts, but your feeling about the facts has changed and it's something that expands beyond intellectual process. Normal intellectual processes just can't figure the shit out. So these extraordinary functions help you but you won't. Famously ineffable. You can't explain it, but you know it. You know. For people like you know they're approaching death, morbid death, maybe cancer or something, and certain psychedelic experiences for some help admirably, where they come back into ordinary function but changed so that they it's not not like I'm not going to die. I've realized that. You know I'm well, no, you're I'm going to die. But my feeling about dying has changed and that's the advantage that our brain has in being able to encounter really complex situations and for short periods, because it's a very high energy state.
Speaker 1:We're not built to stay there long. You can slowly grow it through sustained meditative practices. You can. You know it'll work better for longer periods of time. But we cannot abandon ordinary functions. I have to tell you I'm not being unfaithful, it's just I've been a long day. So, tim, I'm happy to keep going. You know I'm long-winded, no problem so far. This is our first time together, hopefully not the last. What's you know? So what? Like? You know what's your. I'm not saying to go away, but what's your takeaway so far? You know what's your. I'm not saying to go away, but what's your takeaway so far? Like what are we? What's happening here?
Speaker 2:so I think we um laid down awesome foundation what consciousness the body, brain and mind is a philosophical foundation. I think that's that's really important to have this context and commonalities points where we meet each other, where we really meet each other. So I think that's what we did right now. But now you started to explain what really happens with neural rights or other technologies or techniques. So what you said was it was really beautiful that the brain normally in a normal state of consciousness no, I don't want to say normal, Ordinary, it's the word I use?
Speaker 2:Yeah, ordinary, it's a stable state of consciousness, and then we can go to a more anthropic state.
Speaker 1:For short periods of time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but this unstable state of consciousness is where the magic happens in a way.
Speaker 1:But this unstable state of consciousness is where the magic happens, in a way. Well, yeah, because you say ah, because the brain, metabolically, is always dancing between order and chaos, and chaos is actually quite positive as a critical point. So that's, you can like chaos. That sounds like shit to me no way. But actually you can interpret it as a temporary increase in possibilities, right, All these.
Speaker 1:Okay, you're laying in bed on your right side and it's great. After a while it's not great and you want to turn to your left side. Well, you don't go immediately from your left to turn to your left side. Well, you don't go immediately from your left right side to your left side. You go through this thing called turning over. And turning over might begin as an expected process, a logical expected process, but as you do it, all these variables happen your foot gets stuck in the blanket, the pillow moves where you didn't want, if you're in bed with your wife, she gives you an elbow. Whatever it is is that you go through a period of uncertainty for the sake of turning over, to arrive unstable and then to stable again. And that's the process that is innate for adaptive change, that there is some kind of provocative need that the current condition doesn't accept anymore and you have to go through a risk of turning over in bed and getting an elbow from your wife. So understanding this is fundamental to know why the neurovisor light sound process has a technical uniqueness in relation to what it could be or, in some cases, other devices. So I don't. Okay, um, there's another device in the market that's quite popular. It's on the head and I won't name it. I can, but I don't want to create any kind of sense of criticism. But some okay, brain entrainment devices. Classically, I was using them in the 80s. They were exciting and shit at the same time, because they were very, you know, analogous and hard to work and they failed.
Speaker 1:But neurologically, we have what's called bottom-up neurology and top-down neurology. Bottom-up is archaic, primitive. It's an aspect of the earliest properties of the brain where we're able to harvest real-time sensory experience in the moment. That's bottom-up. Then what do we do with all that information? Well, we shouldn't just throw it away. So, neurologically, the brain developed the neocortex where we harvest information that appears to be meaningful by circumstance. We start in a library of the past, so we use that library of the past to predict a probable future. This is brain predictive coding theory, brain modeling. So the top-down process uses the past to gamble on a future and then, when it makes a gamble, a bet, a prediction, then it immediately compares that outcome with real-time experience and if it's true, great. If it's not true, that's called a prediction error.
Speaker 1:I use glasses, as is evident. They're progressives. You can read at the bottom and you can see distance at the top. They're great and they suck at the same time, because when I go outside and I go to walk downstairs, I look down and my visual angle looks through the reading part, which means where I think the steps are, they're not. So there's this like ah, ah, ah thing, it's like oh man. So you know, I've accommodated to it over time, but that's an example where a prediction is in error. Okay. So this is a big topic, it's a fantastic topic Bottom up, real time experience, top down analysis and prediction.
Speaker 1:The top-down process has no neurological interface with the reality of the present moment. It's a virtual fantasy of reality. We talk about virtual reality. Part of our brain works precisely as a virtual reality generator. So, neurologically, this is not me. This is the science, that brain entrainment process where you have a repetitive signal over and over and over again to entrain the brain, the frequency following response, as well as things like guided imagery, where somebody is telling a story and you imagine it as you go along. These are examples of top-down. I want provocative adaptive change, I want entropic triggers, I want to trick the brain into the present moment.
Speaker 1:The only way, neurologically, we have of being in the moment, the present moment, is in real-timetime, bottom-up sensory experience. So I use primarily that I'll tell you more but that one of the characteristics of sensory experience is that by its very nature it's unpredictable. So part of our neurology is able to be like when you're walking in the woods and you know the terrain, especially if you're walking barefoot or something you know. It's a constant set of surprises and real time adjustments. Everything. It's every step, every moment, is I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, let me see, let me see, let me see. Is I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, let me see, let me see, let me see.
Speaker 1:So you can jump up into the top down and predict oh, it's going to be like that. Then you trip and fall on your face and you say I guess I was wrong. So, or especially if you're using Mike, this is like a real bitch because I, like you know, I live up in the mountain rainforest here in Thailand, like you know these glasses like oh man. So sometimes I just it's rather have it blurry and real than clear and untrue, right? So this is really critical to understand that the brain remains open and intrigued by the present moment and the neurovisor.
Speaker 1:The way that I craft the light and sound is I purposely say hi, give you a hug. And then I purposely destabilize the brain, because the brain is always looking for signal in noise, it's always looking for patterns in a process, and I don't give it that I make the brain hungry by some destabilization, because then the brain wants a signal. So after the destabilization, which is pretty short and I can do it by degree then the signaling that I want the brain to consider I inject at that point because the brain is hungry, it's hungry and then, once it starts to, it's like oh yeah, I love that. Like have you ever done fasting? And the first food that you eat after a fast, like you take a bite of a mandarin orange or something and your brain practically explodes. You know, because it's super, super sensitive and the idea is to create the super sensitivity so that experience that is normally ignored or considered not interesting is novel and exciting and unique. That is the nature of present moment experience and when you're in the present moment, it is a constant unfolding of discovery. It is so rich, and that's what Carhart-Harris uses as the term in his entropic brain model is the increase of richness in the information. So, and then I do that. I mean this is a model. Obviously I morph the model according to the session. So first is hi, I love you, I give you a hug, oh, that's not bad. And then it's like I suddenly slapped, like what the fuck are you slapping me around for?
Speaker 1:Then I destabilize the brain for a short period, create an appetite for signal, introduce a signal. The brain starts to groove on the signal and it says, ah, that's really cool. And then I introduce some conflict Because, okay, let's go. I'll use this analogy, I'll make it quick. Let's say you and I are script writers, we're doing a script for a movie. We want to do something in the storyline that brings out hidden aspects of that character. Well, it's a very simple device. What you do is you introduce some conflict because that person under conflicted stress is going to show you things about themselves that they wouldn't show you, they wouldn't exhibit, if things were not stressful. So at certain periods I introduce conflicting signals to see whether you're really grooving on the message, and so it's something like that, without belaboring it.
Speaker 1:So what I've done is I've taken the core elements in information theory and cybernetics and taken the core elements of complex adaptive system theory and also taken elements from psychedelic information theory and neuroplasticity and created processes that are rich in bottom-up immediate experience. And each session is a kind of a neurological movie, a kind of a story in and of itself that moves in a certain vector. So let's, the vector means the theme, whether it's relaxation, focus, creativity, whatever. So let's say it's a one-two punch in the session. The first punch is to shift the brain out of ordinary into extraordinary, to do an entropic shift where it gives up normal processing and then, in this so-called open-minded state, open brain state, then I insert thematic messages because the brain is sensitized to this information and may actually be able to harvest it for further integration. So it is radically and dramatically different from top down brain entrainment and guided imagery and these things.
Speaker 1:There are other devices out there that have some approximation to this, but they don't really develop the. They do well on entropic shift, like Lucia and Roxima and some of these Roxima. They're great devices. They don't have the. I'm not saying they're lacking, I'm saying they don't incorporate the secondary functions like I do. It's not the same crafting.
Speaker 1:It's not difficult to have flashing light or some pulse sound to destabilize the brain. It's not difficult. The thing that you've got to be careful for, as an opinion, is the process of dissociation or depersonalization. If you're in a movie theater and you're watching a movie on screen but you're hearing the soundtrack from a different movie, your brain is going to prioritize one of those signal sources because it can't match them. It doesn't work to match them. So you might end up just watching the movie and ignoring the sound and the music. Or you listen to the sound and the music or you listen to the sound. So when you have devices that have any kind of categorization sometimes just randomization, sometimes progressive and they say you can listen to any music that you want, your brain is going to seek out the most evident patterning and signal it can find. And if you're listening to Celtic harps or I don't know whatever that you're listening to and the light is like your brain is going to go to the patterned music, because our brain always seeks signal and noise. It tries to find patterns in a process. That's just the way we stay alive and don't kill ourselves driving our car. So what happens is a person. With these devices you can generate a dissociated or depersonalized state and it can feel really good, it can feel relieving when you're locked into your habituated state, when you're locked into logic or you're locked into stress. When you're locked into your habituated state, when you're locked into logic or you're locked into stress, you're locked in that dissociation. In dissociation, the me that I feel and the experiences I'm having separate Subject separates from object, subject separates from object. That's dissociation. Ketamine is famous for this. Ketamine is not a psychedelic in that sense. It's a dissociative, or it's called sometimes depersonalization, where you look at your body and it's like not my body. So you can create this and if you're not used to it, it might freak you out or it might feel really good because the pressure of normal logical processing goes away. However, repeatedly it's not good. There's the so-called K-hole and that by progressively like.
Speaker 1:I know a person I'll skip the name of high-ranking intellect, highly accomplished in AI and everything. He loves what he's doing and he was involved in a process like that with a certain flashing light and different music. This gets me in trouble, but I said the risk is honesty. This gets me in trouble, but I said, you know, the risk is honesty. But that he oddly, and couldn't understand why, became less and less and less interested and passionate about his work. And he loves his work. You know, he's an explorer, inventor, you know, and it's like why am I flattening, why am I flattening out here?
Speaker 1:And he came to the realization that he was regularly inducing dissociative states and that, bit by bit, the subjective and the objective were increasingly separating, where he didn't feel the feelings about his conscious experience. He was just having experiences that were related but not really his. So he stopped the whole thing and then, you know, luckily it came back. So you know, when people we suffer as I mentioned earlier, we all hurt at different times for people that are in a hurt that dissociate, I mean, that's what happens in abuse and I'll make up, as you know, I'm not a matured psychologist a little degree in it, but nothing. And when a person is getting abused physically, we'll say that they will describe themselves moving out of their body and even witnessing in a cold, dispassionate way the abuse that is happening.
Speaker 1:Well, obviously that's hugely protective at a psychological level.
Speaker 1:So our brain is capable of unplugging itself in the case of high risk and suffering.
Speaker 1:But to use devices to regularly generate that is not something that I would recommend.
Speaker 1:So the neurovisor has an awful lot in it, and there are other things that are really critical I'm not mentioning. But the basic thing is just because it's flickering light and some kind of pulse sound I mean it isn't music, it's a whole soundscape that I create to avoid music. Actually, I avoid music because of that, because the brain is going to go there. The game is that I believe that our brain has that natural capacity to temporarily shift into extraordinary functions for high-order problem-solving that defies a lot of common intellectual reasoning, that defies a lot of common intellectual reasoning gain some kind of perspective and return to ordinary mind, improved in such a way that even the ordinary mind works better at some kind of intuitive feeling level, even though logic is still logic, somehow it's more clear. So I think that this is the beauty of the fact that the brain can move in this spectrum of healthy states if it's given the opportunity and the stimulation for it and you don't run away from it yeah, thank you so much.
Speaker 2:It was a beautiful um explanation of.
Speaker 1:I hope this was get it sometimes I forget what the question was, but I think it was something about how the neurovisor works. So the point is, just because it's light and sound, flickering light doesn't mean that it's brain entrainment. I call it brain engagement because there's substantially different creative design and organizational processes. I can give you a glass of milk and I can give you a glass of tequila. They're both glasses, they're both liquids, but they're not the same experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for all the listeners. I think if they have no device, they can take a lot of stuff home the one from the stuff you shared. But if anyone is interested, I would highly recommend getting one of the new devices. I will link to all of that what we mentioned in the show notes, for sure. But one more thing, um, and that's the thing about, uh, the visuals, the fractals yeah, yeah yeah, why. Why is this experience?
Speaker 1:well, because that's the way our brain is. Okay, you mentioned meditation. I've also experienced meditation and I can say that I've had you know it's not like all fireworks and you know dakinis and yogis flying through trans-dimensional spaces, but I've had some pretty, what I would call dangerously. But I've had some pretty, what I would call dangerously I would call psychedelic-like experiences in deep meditation processes. And you know I didn't. There was no mushrooms, there was no ayahuasca. It's just me doing what I'm doing.
Speaker 1:So I know categorically at a small personal level that there are different ways of encountering these properties in the brain. Now there's a fellow named Heinrich Kluver who studied in the University of Chicago like the 1930s and he at that time did some of the early studies in the interrelationship of mescaline and photic stimulation very simple analog spinning wheels and so on, and he ended up catalog there's so much, tim, there's so much research on this. You know people that are bumping it, like they say is that a binaural beat in there? I was like, yeah, there's so much research there that existed before the 1970s, huge amounts that have explored these things. So he says you don't want to know why, with photic stimulation, just the light or a small dose of mescaline, what we would call a microdose At that time we did call subclinical. He said if you take a subclinical dose of mescaline and you apply photic stimulation, that subject, that person, will experience visual and sometimes state changes that are equivalent, comparable or equivalent to a full dose of mescaline. This is 1939. I have the books here, so he came up with.
Speaker 1:He says you know what, whether it's just photic stimulation or a whole lot of mescaline or a little bit of mescaline, with photic stimulation you're going to see visuals of four different fundamental categories. Why we know now, because of what are called the hypercolumn structures in the visual cortex, that you're going to see checkerboards, you're going to see radials or spiderwebs, I'll do it this way. Webs, I'll do it this way checkerboards, radials or spider webs, tunnels and funnels and spirals. You're going to see those and there's a ton of. There's a substantial amount of very qualified research that shows the probability of which generated light frequency, what flickers will tend to generate, which ones which ones, and also the color coordination, the relationships with the frequencies.
Speaker 1:This is you know. I mean, if you want to see emerald green with spirals, okay, I can program it. And the thing is is that there is an initial visual impression and then, according to the characteristics of your brain, it will start to morph and evolve them. So right now I'm setting up an experiment where two people with EEG rigs are experiencing the same visor session simultaneously and we'll be able to see the graphed EEGs as to how similar and how different they are. But this is very predictable and understandable stuff as it goes on and I can say you know there's no pride in this not dramatically like with the neurovisor, because that's pretty like rock and roll when it happens, but I can go back, lay down, relax and I start to see this stuff. And that's a combination of years of meditation and the ability to relax so much you know, pretty deep, without going to sleep. Sometimes I do.
Speaker 1:But the visual yeah, okay, I want to say one more thing. One more thing, okay, other than the patterns, there are three basic classifications. There are phosphenes, which are basically, you know, light, blobby, whatever, and you can pretty much just blink and there they are. Then you get the entropics of the things that I described, and then you get what's called the eidetics, where, if you let go into it more and more, and more, then you start to see places and faces and spaces and things. Then you start to and this, these things relate to things like remote viewing, which some people are quite skilled at doing. So it's on a continuum. It's on a continuum and the um, the, the, the varied shifts in conscious states have a parallel relationship with this. Because you can, it can stay a little bit more like a TV screen, or suddenly you can accept it and you're in it, and after a certain period there's no me, that is in it, it's just happening. And the more I'd say the magic word, the more relaxed you are. That I'll say. The more relaxed I am, the more that the interdimensionality of the experience takes over the conscious state, and that's pretty nice. That's pretty nice when you slip there and sometimes you get these things, these kriyas, these pops, where you're there and suddenly it's like it's a little bit like it was a Star Trek when they go into what's it called, like that hyperdrive, like super space or something that, and they're like hitting poof, that thing. You know, when you get those poofs it's like you know seatbelt Titan, here we go and you know the phenomenology of it is either interesting or exciting or scary or wonderful or whatever. To me, the consequent, otherwise it's just a circus act. If you want to go to the circus, just do some acid, it's much easier, or the visor It'll take you there.
Speaker 1:You want to go to the circus? I call it the circus and after a while you've been to the circus enough. Okay, that's fun, that's interesting, the clowns are great. The trapeze guy freaked me out. It's all fine, but the thing that I is the combination of resultant clarity and tranquility. The combination, not just the tranquility and not just the clarity, but the combination like functionally, right now, to have a satisfied level of mental acuity. Clarity is really attractive and also to feel relaxed or peaceful or tranquil, not stressed out and you know, freaked out that I got to talk to Tim, those things. It feels good. I like it. It seems it makes things better. And you know, in some cases I'm probably a nicer guy. So you know whether I go to the circus or not. Of course the circus is fun and if you have, you know, awesome experiences once.
Speaker 1:I'll give this analogy to not make it too, I don't even have a pen, I don't have it. Imagine a piece of paper, well don't you know. Here it is. But imagine if I drew, like a mountain range here, up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down. Let's say the mountain range is 1,000 miles long, of 1,000 miles, metrically, of 1,000 miles.
Speaker 1:How much time is spent on the peaks? Well, a fraction, obviously right. A small fraction is spent on the peaks. Well, a fraction, obviously right, that's a small fraction. So let's say that that thousand mile long mountain range is my life. Yeah, they're going to be peaks.
Speaker 1:However, the peaks are actually a small fraction of my whole life because for every P well, no, technically, for every two peaks, there's one Valley and you, the valley is inversely as far down as the peak is up. So my life is a series of peaks and valleys. Most of the time I'm on the slopes and I can say maybe it's just a cute. Maybe it's not even cute, maybe it's just a cute, maybe it's not even cute, maybe it's just an image that I like a metaphor. But to me I would rather have a wholeness of life, the feeling of wholeness, than seeking peaks and avoiding valleys, and I think that's what I hope that the neurovisor can help. It can help a process that is summary, where the result is a wholeness of life that maybe there's more clarity combined with more tranquility, combined with more bliss and ecstasy.
Speaker 1:I'm not really a bliss guy. That's my weakness. I'm more of the clarity and tranquility kind of a guy. I don't party that. I've never been a party guy. I used to do my acid all by myself, you know, like the weirdo. So that's what I you know I have to.
Speaker 1:I want to put the neurovisor in that context where it can service you in a lot of different ways to have a more wholeness of life, knowing that yeah, I mean I do a lot of experimental work with the neurovisor that is not commercial, or at least not yet commercial, and I mean, god damn, there are sessions combined with certain music and things. Know, it's tripping, it just is, and I've tripped enough to know and I've also done enough meditation to be able to know the differences between tripping and meditation highs. There's some similarities but they're also quite different. So you know the humanness of it all and understanding that. So I'm not a guy that's going to say this. You know this is going to blow your mind Well, sometimes it does, but hopefully it helps your mind become more whole in its adaptability. To me, the ability for our brain to change when change is required is at the heart of wellness, you know when something comes along when, when you need to change and change is required.
Speaker 1:The ability to make adaptive change, I think, is a signature of wellness. And uh, you know, like I don't do backbends very much, I should, but I don't. And I start to. I start to do one and it hurts, so I say, ah, never mind. So if I fit in my car and I drop something in the back seat area and I've got to reach over back and get it, it's not easy because I don't do backbends, what about my brain? What about when my brain has to do a cognitive backbend? And if I don't allow or cause or exercise my brain to do cognitive backbends, guess what? When I need to do one, it hurts, I won't and I can't.
Speaker 1:So to me, exercising that uncertainty, that bellows of ordinary, extraordinary come back to ordinary. And when I come back to the ordinary, the ordinary isn't where I left, it, it's somehow improved. When I would do sustained mountain meditation, retreats, isolate, one, two, three months at a time, I'd come back and my ordinary life was so radically different, the feeling of it was so different in a good way, mean sometimes a little bit of a bummer, because like, oh fuck, but the, the, you know, back to work or whatever. But the they're like. Our brain does this because we need it to do this for problem solving. We need it. Call it left brain, right brain. I really encourage everybody, if you haven't, you know, check out ian mcgillchrist and the master and his emissary, that book, big fat book, and it's a really deep dive into these qualities. Uh, looked at through a hemispheric neurological model, it's not the old left brain, right brain, pop psychology mistakes from the past. It's quite progressive.
Speaker 2:I would say it's really good so I'm pretty, I'm pretty aligned with you and all what you said, but the backbend, no, I really enjoy backbends, you do.
Speaker 1:Why are you doing that?
Speaker 2:That's because you're a lot of backbends, Rotation and bending back, oh wow, yeah, I have a hard time in this.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right, I'm getting too, but you know it's okay. Okay, all right, I'm getting too, but you know it's okay. Okay, I'll talk to you in 42 years. Okay, let's get back to me in 42 years. Let me know how that backbend thing is going.
Speaker 2:I'll do.
Speaker 1:I'll do All right. Okay, if you say you're aligned, is that a polite way of saying you're finished? Good, question.
Speaker 2:I felt that it was a nice circle that we draw. I'm not sure it was a circle, but I think it was a round conversation. I really liked it. I'm not like I'm finished, but I feel that that was pretty nice.
Speaker 1:Okay, again, I'm just joking with you a little bit. It's a pleasure being with you. You're a nice guy, I think it sounds like you're doing good things, and I wish you all the backbends in the world and happy fatherhood with your one-and-a-half-year-old. You know, let them play, let them play, let them play. You know, let them play, let them play, let them play. You know, keep them safe, let them play. I'd say the same thing for you Be safe, but keep playing Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you so much for your time. It was a real pleasure for me. Yeah, is there something you want to share in the end?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Something to share. Yeah, be kind. People have a hard time. You never know.
Speaker 2:Okay, all right, thank you so much, thank you.
Speaker 1:My pleasure, tim, you take care. Give your daughter a hug for me, okay. Take care Thank you All right, okay, bye-bye. Thank you.
